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Theaet. That is surely the best and most reasonable state of mind.
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Str. For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must assert that cross-questioning is the greatest and most efficacious of all purifications, and that he who is not cross-questioned, even though he be the Great King, has not been purified of the greatest taints, and is therefore uneducated and deformed in those things in which he who is to be truly happy ought to be most pure and beautiful.
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Theaet. Perfectly true.
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Str. Well then, who are those who practise this art? I am afraid to say the sophists.
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Theaet. Why so?
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Str. Lest we grant them too high a meed of honor.
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Theaet. But the description you have just given is very like someone of that sort.
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Str. Yes, and a wolf is very like a dog, the wildest like the tamest of animals. But the cautious man must be especially on his guard in the matter of resemblances, for they are very slippery things. However, let us agree that they are the sophists; for I think the strife will not be about petty discriminations when people are sufficiently on their guard.
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Theaet. No, probably not.
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Str. Then let it be agreed that part of the discriminating art is purification, and as part of purification let that which is concerned with the soul be separated off, and as part of this, instruction, and as part of instruction, education; and let us agree that the cross-questioning of empty conceit of wisdom, which has come to light in our present discussion, is nothing else than the true-born art of sophistry.
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Theaet. Let us agree to all that; but the sophist has by this time appeared to be so many things that I am at a loss to know what in the world to say he really is, with any assurance that I am speaking the truth.
